


Closure

by Khashana, read by Khashana (Khashana)



Series: Disrespect!verse [9]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Apologies, Gen, Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes, Podfic and fic together, Post-Traumatic Stress, recovering from abuse, with appearances by Mai and Iroh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26312896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/Khashana, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana
Summary: On their way to pick up Azula, Iroh and Zuko run into Ty Lee at a gas station.
Relationships: Ty Lee & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Disrespect!verse [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782586
Comments: 43
Kudos: 334





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

> Me, at the beginning of the last fic: You may not want to read this in public  
> Four SEPARATE people in the comments: You made me cry  
> Sooooo...thank you for the high compliments <3 and fair warning, this is more of the same.
> 
> Like most stories in a series, you'll be missing a lot if you don't start at the beginning, but this one in particular is very tightly tied to Control. I considered making it a second chapter. 
> 
> Thanks to Will for beta read.
> 
> [Podfic](https://khashanakalashtar.wordpress.com/portfolio/closure/)
> 
> If you're concerned about how this ends, jump down to the end notes for spoilers.

Coming home makes Ty Lee nervous.

She never really got across to her parents how badly she needed to get away from Azula, and she eventually just found a school that 1) was far enough away that she wouldn’t run into Azula, 2) provided housing, 3) was prestigious enough that her parents would let her go, and 4) would let her transfer, and applied.

Still, she has to come back every summer and most winters, and there’s always this vague nervousness in the back of her mind that she’s going to run into Azula and the whole thing will fall apart. She counters it by spending nearly all of her time at home, and somehow her family accepts that she’s busy enough during the school year that she needs the summer to laze around—read, hermit up in her room. Still, she can’t avoid it entirely.

During the summer break a year and a half after she leaves, she pulls the car into a gas station, gets out, and spots Zuko in the car across, staring at her. There’s no mistaking him.

Fear floods her veins, and she finds herself pressed against the car, as though she can phase back inside it and drive off without gas.

Zuko climbs out of the car, which makes her panic spike, but he holds out his hands where she can see them and doesn’t come closer.

“Hey, it’s okay!” he calls.

What must her face be doing that _Zuko_ is treating her like a panicking child?

“Is Azula with you?” she calls back.

“No,” says Zuko. Relief washes over Ty Lee.

“Don’t tell her,” she says. “Please don’t tell her.”

“I won’t. I promise. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” says Ty Lee, and smiles, even though it’s the least convincing mask she’s ever put on.

Zuko and Azula’s uncle Iroh, who had been filling the car, comes around to the passenger side and says, “We won’t breathe a word of seeing you if you don’t breathe a word of seeing us, does that sound fair?”

That calms Ty Lee down enough to remember that Zuko was abused, too, mostly by their father, but also by Azula. Iroh took him away years before Ty Lee left. And they don’t know she left, they must be just as afraid that she’s going to tell on them.

She peels herself back off her car and walks slowly over.

“I don’t talk to Azula anymore,” she says. “So I have no one to tell.”

“What happened?” asks Zuko curiously.

“Nephew,” interjects Iroh, “that isn’t polite.”

Ty Lee stares at him. Doesn’t he realize? “You remember what they’re like, her and your father. You of all people. Actually, what are you doing here? I thought you left town for good.”

“Azula has been attempting to distance herself from her father’s ways for some time now,” says Iroh. “We are helping. But we will not mention seeing you, if you wish.”

“I have to come back every summer, and I’m always on edge worrying I’ll run into her and she’ll suck me straight back into it all,” explains Ty Lee in something of a rush. “Obviously you wouldn’t let that happen, you got out. It was just, seeing you freaked me out a little.”

“No offense taken,” says Iroh smoothly. “I assure you Azula has not been in a position to ‘suck you back in’ for some time, and will not be in the future, either. You are safe.”

She wants to believe him. She wants to think that Azula isn’t hurting people anymore.

“Is she really better? She must be, right, or you wouldn’t trust her. But how do you know she’s not manipulating you?”

Zuko starts to say something, but Iroh cuts him off. “I’d rather not discuss the details without asking my niece. Suffice it to say, I have reason to believe her, she stands to gain nothing by lying to me, and although I am an old dog, I am well versed in my tricks and I will not be letting her manipulate either myself or Zuko. Or you, should you ever choose to re-enter the picture.”

“Do you want my number? So if you want to know more, later, you can ask?” suggests Zuko, and, oh, that’s smart of him. If she doesn’t want to use it, she never has to, and if she’s up in the middle of the night a month from now wondering if Azula was ever capable of being a normal person, she can find out. And Zuko can’t possibly give her number to Azula if she’s the one writing his down. Ty Lee nods, and gets out her phone to enter it in.

The last time Ty Lee saw Zuko, he was an angry sixteen-year-old bearing the brunt of his father’s temper. She’s surprised to realize how glad she is that he seems normal, that Azula and Ozai didn’t ruin him. And he must have done a lot of healing, to be able to come back and help her after what she did.

“I’m really glad you’re doing okay, Zuko. And I hope she is, too.”

And she is. Ty Lee is aware that Azula wasn’t made in a vacuum, that she is the way she is because of the way her father raised her, and she isn’t bitter enough to hope it destroys Azula before she has the chance to grow.

She’s glad she made the decision to take Zuko’s number, because she _is_ lying awake in the middle of the night wanting closure about Azula, and it’s been…weeks. But she’s still afraid of him having her number. She (mostly) trusts him not to give it to Azula, but what if Azula goes through his phone or…?

She has the idea to call him from a payphone, which still exist in her hometown, and she plies one with quarters the next day and dials the number.

It goes to voicemail.

Of course it does.

“Hey Zuko, this is Ty Lee. If you’re just screening your calls, call me back, but if you actually aren’t there don’t bother because this is a payphone and I’ll just try again some other time. Thanks.”

She hangs up and waits.

A minute later, it rings, and she snatches it off the hook.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” says Zuko, sounding faintly amused. “Payphone?”

“Yeah. Well. What if she gets into your phone and sees my contact?”

“I could just save your number under Professor Nguyen or something.”

“Who’s that?”

“No one. I made him up. If I put you under a real professor you’re going to get texts in the middle of the night asking about the homework right around exams.”

She laughs. “Okay. I’ll text you.” She still has his contact open from looking up his number, so she sends him a quick ‘hi Zuko’.

“Got it,” he reports. “So, what did you want to know?”

“She’s not there?”

“Grocery shopping with Uncle.”

“And is she? Better?”

“Yeah.” His voice gets soft. Fond. “I don’t wanna, like, give you all the dirt? When she doesn’t know? But she really is sorry for the way she used to act. She feels really guilty for what she did to you in particular.”

Ty Lee startles. “She does?”

The phone alerts her that she needs to feed it more quarters, so she hangs it up and calls him right back on her cell.

“Yeah,” says Zuko, as though there was no interruption. “You leaving was kinda what kickstarted the whole thing, actually. And she gets that you had a right to leave and that you don’t owe her forgiveness, and to be honest she probably wouldn’t reach out even if she saw your name in my contacts. But I don’t want to think about what it would do to her mental health if she thought we were sneaking around behind her back.”

Wow. That is not what Ty Lee expected.

“Do you think it would help her to talk to me?”

She doesn’t mean to say it. She doesn’t want to offer it.

“Yes,” says Zuko plainly. “It would help her to be able to apologize. But I don’t know that it would help _you_ to see _her._ ”

Ty Lee makes a questioning noise.

“She’s still really intense and she gets into these guilt spirals, and you might feel obligated to tell her it’s okay even when it isn’t because she hasn’t really learned how not to do that.”

“Oh.”

“If you want to risk it, you know where to find me, but you don’t owe her that.”

Ty Lee really appreciates Zuko right now.

“Maybe later. So what have you been up to?”

“Uh. I’m about to be a junior in college. Political Science.”

“Ooh, nice! I’m about to start college, myself. Where are you?”

He tells her, and she tells him her school in return.

“Oh, I’ve got a friend there. We went to high school together.”

“Oh yeah? What’s her name?”

“Mai.”

“Your age?”

“My grade, but almost a year younger.” That puts her about a year older than Ty Lee, who is herself older than Azula by ten months. 

“What’s her major?”

“She’s trying to switch to art history.”

Ty Lee notes that Zuko growing out of the sulky teenager phase did not make talking to him feel any less like an interrogation. She gets him to give her Mai’s email address, and promises to call again.

_Hi! You don’t know me, but I’m an old friend of Zuko’s and we recently reconnected, and turns out you and I go to the same school (or we will once I get there next month), so I badgered him into giving me your email address. Any tips for a new frosh? I have no idea what I want to major in, but I love gymnastics and dogs and astrology. Zuko says you’re switching to art history._

_Ty Lee_

_Take as many different classes as you can, don’t eat the chicken fingers at the dining hall, invest in hangers, use the buddy system at parties and never leave your drink unattended._

_Yes, I used to be pre-law with an art history minor, but I’m switching them. I have enough credits in English to take the minor without taking any more classes._

_How do you know Zuko?_

_Mai_

_Hangers???_

_That’s super cool! I’ve thought about English, but also dance, and also sociology, and the list goes on._

_Technically I was friends with his little sister but we don’t talk anymore. I ran into Zuko again at a gas station and we started talking._

_Ty Lee_

_Vertical space is your friend and hangers are a cheap way to get more of it. Also helps you avoid setting things down on nasty countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms._

_You know Azula??_

_Mai_

She calls Zuko again in a panic.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

“Fine. You?”

“Can’t complain! Half of my room is packed up for college, so I can’t find anything, but it’s going to be worth it! I can’t wait!”

“Okay?”

“So excited.” In a flash, she spots a segue and seizes it. “Speeeeaking of which, I’ve been talking to Mai about getting ready for college, and it just happened to come up, she might’ve just vaguely implied that she knows Azula?”

“Oh. Yeah. She was part of the plot to help Azula escape our father. They might’ve kept talking, I don’t know.”

“And you didn’t think maybe it might have been useful to mention that?”

“I didn’t know you’d be talking about _important_ things. Look, I can’t imagine Azula’s opened up to Mai, they’ve never even met in person. Just ask her not to mention you.”

Okay. Ty Lee can do that.

_Yeah…don’t mention my name to her, if that’s okay? Things got ugly there at the end, haha._

_That’s such a good idea about vertical space!_

_Ty Lee_

_No problem. She’s not a bad kid, though._

_Mai_

_It’s been years! What’s your impression of her now?_

_Ty Lee_

_Reserved. Polite. Kind of sad._

_Mai_

It really throws Ty Lee for a loop. None of that sounds like Azula. Bold, self-centered, sharp-witted, smart as hell, that’s what she would have said.

She texts Zuko.

_What’s she like now?_

She leaves out the name, in case Azula sees Zuko’s phone, and trusts that he’ll know who she’s talking about.

_Azula? Fragile. Kind of quiet._

Huh.

She calls Zuko.

“Hello?”

“Hey! How are things?”

“Fine. Ty Lee. Just say it.”

“You can tell her you know a way to get in contact with me. If she wants, she can write me a letter and you can decide if you should forward it to me.”

Azula (or more likely, Zuko) takes her very literally. Zuko texts her almost a week later to ask for her mailing address.

_How did she take learning that you’ve been talking to me?_

_I didn’t get into the details. I think she was too shocked to really wonder where I’d run into you. It took her a couple drafts to get a letter she liked, and she had me read it. It’s a little self-flagellating still, but we caught the worst of it._

He sends her a selfie. In it, he’s sitting propped up in a bed, with a sleeping Azula draped across his chest. There’s a damp patch on his shirt where she has her face pressed, and a crumpled section by her fingers as though she’d been clutching at him.

Ty Lee wonders if Zuko realizes what an intimate, private moment this is, if he’s spotted these same things or he thinks it’s just a cute photo to tease her with later. 

_Hey ik I don’t know her anymore but I don’t think she would want you sending this to people. You can tell she’s been crying._

_Fuck you’re right. Didn’t look that closely. Thanks for catching it._

Maybe it takes all her moral high ground away, but she doesn’t delete the photo.

_Dear Ty Lee,_

_I’m so sorry for everything I did to you. It’s been eating at me for a long time, so thank you for letting me apologize. You didn’t have to do that._

_I won’t blame you if you don’t forgive me or still don’t want to talk to me ever again. I haven’t forgiven my father and won’t even if he apologizes. Maybe when I’m old and grey. If I hurt you half as badly as he did me, I wouldn’t expect you to._

_That isn’t an excuse, by the way. “I only hurt you because he hurt me first.” It might be true, but I’m not trying to defend myself._

_I’m afraid this sounds like I’m using reverse psychology on you, but Zuko thinks I’m just overcompensating. But truly and honestly, I’m not expecting anything. That was the first thing I learned in therapy: none of it means anything if my end goal is still to manipulate you somehow._

_Cause that’s what I did. The internet says a good apology involves stating what you did and why it was wrong and promising never to do it again. So if you don’t want to rehash all that feel free to skip the next paragraph._

_I manipulated, controlled, and abused you. At least, that’s what Asami calls it. Other people say it’s not abuse because I was a child, but do the semantics really matter? If it helps to call it that, then do it. I was so afraid you’d leave me that I cut off all your other avenues and made you feel like you didn’t have anyone else and never would. Well, that’s what I was trying to do. I won’t tell you how you felt. It was wrong because you’re a person, with autonomy, not just mine to play with like a doll._

_I can’t imagine that I’ll ever have the opportunity to do it again, not to you, but I promise anyway, and I’ll never do it again to anyone else, either. A lot has changed since then and I’m pretty sure I’m not capable of anything like that anymore, not on purpose, not long-term. The thought makes me sick._

_I don’t know if you’ve ever blamed yourself for it, but just in case, I want to make sure you know none of it was your fault. I picked you because you were smart and fun and you were nice to me, not because I thought you’d be easy to control or anything. Even if I had, it still wouldn’t be your fault. Maybe you’ve always known it was all on me and you’re going to find this paragraph really offensive, but a lot of people do blame themselves and so I needed to say something._

_My therapist says I’m still allowed to ask for things, and I’m having a hard time with that, but if it’s okay, could you send a response? Even just passing a message through Zuko. Just to tell me where we stand, even if it’s bad. I already know I’m going to spend a lot of time wondering how you’ll react to this. Not knowing is worse, and I could really use the closure._

_(If you didn’t read this far…I guess I hope you’ll tell Zuko that.)_

_Best wishes,_

_Azula_

Ty Lee isn’t sure what she’s expecting, but it isn’t to burst into tears. Pain, anger, grief, yearning, and finally a terrible relief. It’s the closure she’s needed so badly and for so long. She cries for her lost childhood and for Azula’s, the time they will never get back, for the damage done that will never be repaired, for the guilt present in every word in that letter and what it took for Azula to get to this point. She cries because she can empathize, and because she wants to forgive her, maybe even feels obligated to despite Azula’s assurances, and because she also wants to hate her uncomplicatedly forever, and because she still doesn’t trust her despite the evidence, and because despite that maybe she can exist in the same city as Azula now without being afraid.

_Dear Azula,_

_Thank you for all the things you said in your letter. I needed to hear a lot of them._

_I’m really glad you’re doing better and getting therapy and you’re out of that awful house. It seems like Zuko’s doing okay at being a big brother, even though he’s out of practice._

_I don’t want to be friends again. I don’t want to stay in touch. But I understand and I accept your apology. I don’t know if that means I forgive you or not. But I’d like us both to be able to move on with our lives and not be defined by each other. I needed the closure too._

_So…assuming you’re serious about never doing this again, and working to be better and respecting people’s autonomy, I guess I give you permission to forgive yourself._

_Best,_

_Ty Lee_

Zuko texts her three days later. All it says is _Thank you._

**Author's Note:**

> Zuko makes sure Ty Lee and Azula don't end up in a confrontation and are able to initiate contact at a pace that works for both of them. Azula apologizes and Ty Lee is able to get closure and let go of some of the baggage she's been carrying around, and she tells Azula it's okay to forgive herself. But she and Azula do not become friends/reconnect/start talking again, and Ty Lee says she doesn't know if she forgives Azula or not.
> 
> Insert generic offer to [follow me on tumblr](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/tagged/disrespect-verse) and [request director's commentary](https://khashanakalashtar.tumblr.com/post/625660382487461889/rageprufrock-lets-go-i-will-love-you-if-you).


End file.
